The European Championship is a tournament invariably to relish. There are fewer teams involved than in a World Cup, the football is compressed into an urgent three-week period and the big teams are in action against each other from the start. Enjoy it while you can because the next tournament, to be held in France in 2016, will regrettably be expanded from 16 to 24 teams. You can indeed have too much of a good thing.

The mob in full cry is always an ugly thing. Early this season, as Arsenal were thrashed 8-2 at Manchester United, and even before that, the cries of those traducing Arsene Wenger were becoming ever-louder. A consensus against him had formed; group think predominated.

Here's something that every powerful man or woman should know: never let on that your enemies or critics are getting to you. David Cameron is, on the whole, masterful at cultivating an aura of insouciance and calm, even as the eyes of the head-bangers on his back benches are swivelling most wildly.

Steve Bruce, sacked last week by Sunderland, was once considered to be among the brightest of the new generation of more technocratic English coaches and managers, along with Aidy Boothroyd, Steve Cotterill, Iain Dowie, Phil Parkinson, Paul Ince and Alan Pardew. Now, of that group, only Pardew is managing in the Premier League and he has already had several false starts and sackings.

Tottenham are enjoying their best start to a season since their Double-winning season and this is their most convincing team since 1987, when manager David Pleat, learning from what he had witnessed at the 1986 World Cup, introduced a new system with Clive Allen as a lone striker in front of a highly mobile five-man midfield.

It's hard to believe, especially when you consider the abject World Cup campaign in South Africa, but Fabio Capello is statistically the most successful ever England manager, with a 67 per cent win rate.

Tiger Woods, according to his former caddy Steve Williams, is a "black a***hole" or words to that effect. England captain John Terry is the subject of police and Football Association investigations for allegedly calling Anton Ferdinand, the QPR defender and young brother of the more famous Rio, a "f*****g black c**t".

It's quite straightforward being manager of Chelsea. Roman Abramovich, when he is not feuding with fellow oligarchs, has unambiguous demands: he wants his team to play attacking, entertaining football while also winning championships and, especially, the Champions League. I'd want the same if I owned a Premier League club and had spent hundreds of millions on transfers and players' salaries. Why settle for anything less?

All weekend I could not stop thinking about the inspirational Wales rugby team and the injustice of the sending off early in the first half of their young captain, Sam Warburton, after an intervention by a referee that effectively gifted France an undeserved place in the World Cup Final at Eden Park, Auckland, on Sunday.

Much has been written by way of explanation for the struggles and mysterious loss of form of Fernando Torres, who not so long ago was surely the best and most exciting striker in the Premier League, if not in the whole of Europe, a speedster and goal-getter without compare. Then it all began to go wrong.